New Jersey Drivers Deserve a Break on Congestion Pricing

The coming of congestion pricing to the southern third of Manhattan is bringing special pleaders out of the woodwork. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority should do its best to disappoint most of them. There is, however, one group complaining about the unfairness of the congestion charge that has a point and should get a break.

I speak of the residents of New Jersey, who already pay $14.75 to drive into Manhattan at peak hours (that’s with an E-ZPass transponder; it’s $17 without). The motivation behind the congestion charge is to (1) reduce traffic in the most crowded parts of Manhattan and (2) raise money for public transportation improvements. The relatively steep tolls that motorists pay to cross the Hudson River from New Jersey into Manhattan through the Holland and Lincoln tunnels and over the George Washington Bridge already serve to (1) reduce traffic in Manhattan and (2) subsidize public transportation. The public transportation they subsidize consists of PATH trains and bus and ferry terminals controlled by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, not subways, buses and commuter trains controlled by the MTA, but it’s not really the fault of New Jersey motorists that the area’s transportation system is a “hydra-headed and fragmented monstrosity,” as soon-to-be-elected New York City mayoral candidate John Lindsay put it in 1965.